The Lucid Group Award for Excellence in Public Health Communications

Summary of work

As part of its ongoing New Normal, Same Cancer initiative, to raise public health awareness around cancer, AstraZeneca targeted men at risk of prostate cancer and specifically black men over 45.

In the UK, prostate cancer affects one in eight of men during their lives, but for the black community, it is one in four, placing this group at a much higher risk of developing prostate cancer relative to the wider population.

In order to get through to this traditionally hard-to-read audience, GCI Health launched a first-of-its-kind activation for AstraZeneca, a hyper-targeted audio advert disseminated via Spotify, encouraging early diagnosis through awareness of the signs and risk factors associated with the disease.

Carrying the simple message: ‘Prostate cancer doesn’t wait, neither should you’, the Spotify ad reached 150,364 men of whom 1,374 clicked through to the NHS Prostate Cancer website to learn more about the disease. This click-through rate of 0.64 was ten times the industry average.

As a result of the campaign’s success in the UK the initiative is now being rolled out in the US and Canada.

Judges' comments

This campaign showed a difference in how it engaged with the target community and using Spotify as a channel was an interesting aspect and provided a good reach. The judges look forward to seeing this project develop.